


Sleep Deprivation

by Lilithisbitter



Category: Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episodefic, M/M, Pre-Slash, Psychoactive Drugs, The Hounds of Baskerville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilithisbitter/pseuds/Lilithisbitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Knight can't sleep with a hound haunting his every step.  </p><p>Sherlock Holmes won't sleep on a case.  </p><p>They've both been dosed with with a psychoactive compound that causes hallucinations and paranoia in the victim.  They fight crime or rather, Henry is paranoid and Sherlock is a paranoid deducing jerk.</p><p>A "The Hounds of Baskerville" episodefic with Sherlock/Henry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Deprivation

Victorian Novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton had once penned the infamous prose, "It was a dark and a stormy night." It wasn't a stormy night, but it was dark, cold, and there was a strong wind blowing in from the east. He feared them illogically all the same.

The winds on Dartmoor may have been the bays and howls of the hound. Henry had no intention of finding out. How long had it been since he had been able to sleep? Days? Henry could hear the calm tones of his therapist explaining that man wasn't meant to go this long without sleep, that the mind played tricks on itself starting as soon as the third day. She had tried to give him a sedative; he had pretended to take it, cheeked it and squirreled the thing away in his cigarette pack. It might come in handy. He wasn't sure how.

Louise Mortimer meant well, but she didn't have to fear the hound that ripped his father to shreds. Henry had never been able to own a dog since that fateful day. They were all potential hounds. Every last one of them. They could somehow just transform into the hound. It didn't matter how friendly their eyes were or how earnest their wagging tails were, they were killing machines with sharp fierce teeth.

Which left him, currently approaching day three without sleep. Hallucinations on that apparently. Anything could be the hound. Then again, it could be a harmless object. Several times now, he had tried to retreat to what seemed like the safety of the inner rooms of his house, but there were narrow hallways and blind corners. A hound could sneak up on you and rip your throat out in a blink. "Dear God," Henry found himself saying, every time he thought of venturing within.

True, the wall of glass windows was dangerous. A hound could break through, but there were automatic lights... he could see it coming. And hopefully, the beast would lash itself to pieces in its efforts to rip Henry's face off.

He was ready for the damned thing. As ready as he could be. The lights in his yard pulsed on and off. It was if the hound was playing games with him. Henry's breath caught in his throat. He dared not breath as he inched toward the glass, picturing the hound weaving through the yard, ready for the kill.

Henry was well aware that he could die that very night.

There was a loud twap as the beast's paw landed against the glass. Henry screamed. There was a flash, reality shifted, and he was surprised that it wasn't a paw at all. It was a hand. Mr. Sherlock Holmes was leaning against the glass, breathing heavily, eyes wide and frightful. His mouth was parted, exposing his prominent front teeth and a row of slightly crooked lowered teeth. It might have been endearing if the man wasn't clearly frightened out of his mind. 

Sherlock opened his mouth and a very un-Sherlock-like thing spilled out of it. "I saw a gigantic hound."

Henry quickly opened the door.

Sherlock stepped in, catlike as usual, even if was frightened cat being chased by a metaphysical hellhound. It didn't help that Henry nearly strangled the man on the way. It was an accident. He was way too eager to slam the door close and evidently Sherlock's omnipresent scarf had come partially undone. The result was Sherlock doing a half step backwards, fingers under expensive cashmere making little choking noises, narrow eyes going to wide and startled. If Henry had been in a sane frame of mind, he would have said Sherlock looked like a thinner version of Hugh Laurie back when he was playing Bertie Wooster.

He might have been commented on it. What he did say was a sound, "Aw, fuck me!"

Sherlock was gasping something that sounded like "Door, scarf, not now..." and something about "More arty." A sane part of Henry's brain wondered if he sounded as mad as Mr. Holmes did at this very moment. That sane voice was swallowed by madness.

"Sorry," he said, feeling lame as the door released its bite on the scarf and by extension Sherlock's throat.

All he got was a few coughs and was he assumed was meant to be a death stare. It looked pitiful. Sherlock was trembling, biting his lips, his eyes still wide and terrified. It didn't take a genius to know sheer cold blood fear.

"You saw the hound," Henry said, confirming the detective's words and giving him one final chance to deny it. Sherlock didn't, he didn't even nod, just stared back with frightfully pale eyes, corpse pale eyes. This was the arrogant sod that had shoved his face into Henry's to huff cigarette smoke off him, close enough to kiss. Henry closed the door as Sherlock padded to the sofa and somehow gracefully flopped onto it.

Even in fear, Sherlock Holmes was apparently determined to always behave like a cat. Guy even sounded like a jaguar trapped in a cello. The movement only emphasised his long legs. It made Henry well aware that despite his arrogance, Sherlock was a very attractive man. Of course, it wasn't like arrogance stopped one from being attractive, but there was a haughtiness normally to the man's face that made it impossible to determine. Arrogance stripped away, he was a swan trapped in a net, all wide eyed and frightened. His long neck and coattails only added to the illusion. "You need anything?"

He expected the man to say something biting, acidic, but there was nothing but that hitch in his breath. Sherlock clutched Henry's wrist suddenly, frightfully tight, and said nothing. Not knowing what to do, Henry joined Sherlock on the sofa in stony silence.

Sherlock looked at the blanket and pillow on either side of the sofa, evidence of all the time Henry had attempt to sleep and failed. The hound was still out there. If he observed, he didn't comment. Henry out of options put his arm around Sherlock's surprisingly bony shoulders. He expected Sherlock to shove the arm back off. Instead Sherlock hands rose to his mouth, steepled together in thought. "What a pair we make," he mused. "I couldn't trust what I saw..." He seemed to be mulling it over.

"A hound," Henry ventured, "You saw a hound. That's what I saw and that's what I know you definitely saw. A demon hell hound."

There was a pause as Sherlock tapped his fingers in sequence, from pinkie to index finger and back, a fluid motion, several times, palms still pressed together. It was some odd version of a detective's prayer. "You saw a hound," he emphasised. "And by extension, I did. But why?" He stared at his hands. "Fear. It's catching. Or at least your concept of fear, Mr. Knight is..."

Henry tensed. "I told you, the hound is real."

Sherlock inspected one of his hands. "I'm still shaking. This fear thing horrifies, shocks, and somewhat arouses me."

"You... wha?" Henry wasn't sure if he heard it right. "Did you say arouse?"

"Yes..." came the irritated tone. "Look at me, Mr. Knight. I am frightened out of my wits, irrational, petty, and aroused! These are feelings that ordinary dull people have on their everyday dull days. They get up in morning and go 'what to do? What to do the day is boring and I am very stupid and don't have very many words to express myself. I know... I'll wank.' And they do. But not me. I was better... divorcing from feelings, but I came here, I caught feelings, at least some of them, at least some of the worst... being your fear."

Henry blinked. "Do you need to breathe?" He had never heard anyone talk so fast without a single breath. The great consulting detective probably had a set of gills. "Any need to replenish oxygen?"

Sherlock laughed. It was dry and full of more than a bit of self-pity. "Look me. The second time I snapped out this evening. Yes, there is something the matter with me. I'm like some paler shade of you." Another dry laugh. "How long has it been since you slept?"

"I just had a lie down," Henry lied. "Don't you ever sleep?"

Just like that, the lie was discovered. "No, you haven't."

"H-how d-di-di-" Henry stumbled over his words, trying for the best way to not sound like a complete clot.

And failed. "Did I know?" Sherlock's head tilted to the side and he gave a brief smile of something that had clearly eaten the cat that had eaten the canary. "You've seen my work, you've seen my deductions in play. Or did you want me to deduce you again? Is that seduction for you Devon rich folk?"

There was a pause in which Henry tentatively nodded his head.

"I'll take that, oh stuttering lord of Baskerville, as a yes." The only consulting detective in the world pointed at Henry's attire. "First off, you're not in anything resembling sleepwear. You've only managed to grab clothing off of hangers. Shirt, pants, but not pajamas. You don't strike me as someone who sleeps au naturel, but for all I know maybe you do. Maybe you like long nude runs in the woods, but that is aside the point. When I entered the yard, you weren't even attempting to sleep; you were squeezing your eyes shut. There's a difference."

"Wait," Henry interrupted, "That was you?"

He could picture it now. Sherlock Holmes fleeing the hound, fearfully looking over his shoulder, darting in and out of the yard, every time he turned the automatic lights on. Each circuit would have brought him closer and closer to the window until Sherlock's hand landed on the glass the same time Henry thought that the beast had attacked him. "You knew it was me who entered your yard. I am in the middle of a deduction. Feel free not to interrupt me," he said, nostrils flaring, nose wrinkling.

It was a very attractive quality in a rather prickish man. Henry had never been choosy in his bed partner. Male, female, he was attracted equally to them and they in turn to him. Surprisingly, you'd think someone like Holmes would have picked this up, but he was more likely to catalogue your shoes than your choice of bed partners. "Of course."

"Add that to the fact that when I talked to you, you didn't have a groggy tone to your voice as most people do when they wake up. You sound tired as if you haven't slept, but than again most people who have been through what you have tend to not sleep. So, I ask you... when have you last slept?" He turned his pale face to meet Henry's.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because despite what you think," Sherlock mused, bloodshot eyes only emphasising the shadows beneath them, "Sleep deprivation will kill you before any monstrous hound on the moor will."

Henry licked his suddenly dry lips, the urge to smoke strong. "How long has it been since you've slept, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock gave out a vague fox-like bark of a laugh. "I have trained my body to go without many things for a long time. Sleep being one of them. You on the other hand will find a lack of sleep quite spectacularly fatal."

Dumbfounded, Henry quickly withdrew his arm from around Sherlock's shoulder. The man hurriedly drew it back. Henry debated withdrawing a second time, but Sherlock's nails pinched into his skin. "What do you mean spectacularly fatal?"

Sherlock thoughtfully chewed on the side of his thumb, mulling it over. "Well, considering that sleep is used to repair oneself, oneself of course being ordinary you, think it through and-"

"I am," Henry interrupted. "I'm still not getting it."

There was a stare that could only be classified as deadly tossed his way. "Of course not," Sherlock said both icily and silkily. "I hadn't even begun to explain it yet. Your body will begin to hallucinate... than you will experience spells of madness and periods of microsleep..." Going off Henry's befuddled expression, he elaborated, "Your body will shut down for a few minutes at most, trying to refuel. And then comes a sleep that you will never wake up from... IE... death." Sherlock paused for what could only be dramatic effect," But you will continue to push on and on, for fear of the hound."

"The hound," Henry echoed and looked at the window. He could picture it pacing the route Sherlock had taken, somehow invisible to the motion detectors. How could they sense it? "Mr. Holmes, the hound..."

There was what was only could only be the sound of the hound baying on the moor, its haunting sound clearly the sound of a beast out for blood. Henry muffled a scream. Sherlock glanced out the window, his expression unreadable. "That's just a German Shepherd," he commented. "Wrong direction for the howl to come from. Nowhere near Dewer's Hollow."

"I heard it..." Henry insisted, "Hungry for my blood."

Surprisingly, even though Sherlock was apparently scared out of his wits, he scoffed. "Mr. Knight, even if the creature came from the top labs at Baskerville, it's still a dumb creature. If it had the memory, it would be looking for a child, not a man."

"You find that comforting?" Henry asked.

"No," Sherlock said bluntly. "But I do find that factual."

"Sounds lonely."

Sherlock's steely gaze meet his own and for a moment Henry wondered if this was how bugs felt whilst being skewered by specimen pins. Even the haze of fear didn't lessen the meaning behind the look, narrowed eyes, wrinkled brow, crinkled nose, lip peeled up in distain. He shook the thought as being silly, the bugs were probably dead before they were mounted to the display, weren't they? Although he probably wouldn't put it past Sherlock Holmes to pin a live specimen to the card. He had seen a fresh specimen of a bright blue butterfly of some sort next to a coal black bee in the man's kitchen only a few days prior, so maybe... "Yes... how is factual lonely?"

"Because you state it so bluntly. It's like you're trying to comfort yourself, but all you're all pins and needles like me. All you can come up is cold hard facts." He paused for emphasis. "Sounds pretty lonely to me. Any reason?"

"Besides seeing your hell hound?" Sherlock gave a half-hearted snort. "Can't think of any besides John being arrogant."

Shrugging, Henry took the opportunity to light up. Again, Sherlock's eyes, even dulled with fear, took on the same air of eagerness they had back at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock's eyes widened, he licked his lips, and eyed the cigarette, head looking as if it wanted to snap forward to inhale.

"Now, shut up and smoke," Sherlock had said before proceeding to stick his face into Henry's own before inhaling.

He didn't this time. He was judging this moment for once. "Inadvisable, right, John?" Henry thought he heard him say under his breath.

Suddenly the odd behavior made sense. "You quitting smoking?"

Sherlock shrugged and pulled at one of his still gloved hands. "I'm quitting on advice." The shrug was reluctant. He didn't want to. "I'd kill for a cigarette."

Henry almost dropped his cigarette out of shock.

"Not you," Sherlock said absentmindedly. "But I am seriously considering murder for a smoke."

That time he did. Sherlock neatly caught the cigarette in midair. "Try not to drop it this time," he advised, pressing the damp filter back between Henry's lips. "I don't think you'd appreciate second to third degree burns anywhere near there."

Henry's hand rose back up with the cigarette and he took slow drag from it. Sherlock meanwhile, pulled his legs up onto the sofa, posed to huff smoke. "Don't you want a cigarette?" Henry ventured to ask, packet of cigarettes at ready.

"No," Sherlock said hurriedly. "Those your usual brand or did you get a different sort this time?" 

"Always the same," Henry replied.

The package was already yanked out of his hands by a very impatient Sherlock. "They look ordinary aside from the pill you squirreled away from there. Unless Imperial Tobacco has started packing Zimovane in with all packs of Lambert & Butler." He tossed the package of cigarettes somewhere behind the sofa. "Better not risk it. John would know. Keep puffing."

Henry did so, his hand trembling. Sherlock breathed in and out, eyes half closed, trying to breathe in any errant smoke. Instead of looking rapt, he looked agitated. "It's not working. Why isn't it?!"

"I'm doing the best I can," Henry said, tapping the ashes into a saucer that was doing double duty as an ashtray. It would probably be the few times in the next fifteen minutes where Sherlock wasn't too close. It was one thing to have him next to you, it was another thing to have him shove his face that so. "Maybe it's the fright of the hound. Trust me. I didn't smoke as much as I do now, before the hound that is-"

Sherlock's eyes snapped open. "Breathe deeper," he barked and shoved his pale bony face in Henry's. 

If Henry had been smoking or Sherlock had been more of a normal weight, he would have burnt his face. All it did was cause Henry to borderline hyperventilate for a few seconds. Sherlock huffed in irritation. "What?"

"Keep smoking," Sherlock ordered.

"Mr. Holmes, I'm not sure what's supposed to change..." Henry argued.

On the next puff and exhalation, Sherlock suddenly darted forward again, mouth open and covered Henry's. At first, Henry thought 'He's kissing me.’ but that suddenly turned to the realization that Sherlock was trying to literally suck the air out of Henry's lungs. And now, failing that, was trying to suck the nicotine off his teeth.

There was nothing passionate about the movement. Sherlock's nose was jamming right into his, a furious mashing that sort of squished them to the side. Henry never thought tongues could literally duel, but he did the best fighting he could as Sherlock's very warm tongue made a beeline for every single tooth, tracing every surface before moving on. Like a madman obsessed. The cigarette in Henry's hand burned toward the filter. Closer and closer it crept. He could feel the warmth of it on his skin.

Sherlock's mouth tasted strongly of whisky, overly strong coffee, and sugar. He was also a miserable kisser. Hopefully, he didn't kiss that way all the time. Maybe only when he was jonesing for a cigarette. Sherlock thankfully pulled away, strange pale eyes halfway closed. "Better?" Henry ventured to ask.

"Borderline," Sherlock said with mild irritation or it could have been amusement. His face was settling back into his flat glare. "You've been chain smoking. Your mouth is an imaginarium of nicotine."

"Thank you?" It seemed the only good thing to say.

The moment, whatever moment was forming was shattered. "I have to pee," Sherlock stated. 

He pulled himself to his feet. It seemed both random, highly inappropriate, very much Sherlock Holmes from what Henry knew of the man, and once again who just announced they had to take a leak? "Bathroom is-"

"Down the hall," Sherlock finished the sentence. 

He was already to his feet. Henry padded after him. Sherlock looked back over his shoulder, amused looking. "Really, Mr. Knight, do you think the hound will attack you if I duck out?"

"We do have to stick together, Mr. Holmes. Horror film cliché number one. If you get divided, someone will die."

Sherlock scoffed. "Really now? Horror film clichés." He sounded exactly like Alan Rickman, sarcasm and all. Henry expected him to drawl out "That will be 50 points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter."

"Mr. Holmes," Henry said, slowly and calmly as one was able to. "I am being as rational as any man can possibly and probably be in irrational times such as these. Now, I'll have to be in the bathroom as the same time as you. It is the only way for us to qualify as being in the same room."

"Fortunately, I didn't have to pee," Sherlock casually drawled, with a shake of his overly curly head. "I lied."

"So you were trying to run for it."

"Oh I wasn't trying to make a run it," came the retort. "I was testing you. You failed. It was a test I came about once I had enough nicotine in my system to overcome the nag of withdrawal. Not even a nicotine patch, what the hell is John thinking..." Sherlock trailed off and whirled neatly about in a flurry of coat and scarf. There was a triumphant sort of smirk on his face. All teeth and raised eyebrows. "The man who greets me at the door with a gun-" 

"What gun?" Henry asked. He hadn't remember taking up a gun, his gun, bought with cash, no permit, highly illegal. It was still where he left it, loaded, just in case. "I never bought a gun, you smirking prat."

He didn't think it was even possible but one of Sherlock's eyebrows managed to raise even higher. "Smirking prat, am I?" he said. He actually looked through the open door to the bathroom mirror. "That's not a smirk, Mr. Knight. That's risus saronicus."

"Disturbingly wide smile," Henry corrected himself, knowing he could never pronounce what Sherlock Holmes had easily rattled off. Even while suffering fear, something the great consulting detective of Baker Street had hinted at never feeling, Sherlock had fallen easily back into his old arrogance. If fear had given him attractiveness in a rather androgynous way, arrogance made him a strange alien being composed of sharp angles, curling thick hair, and pale cat eyes. "You were saying?"

"Thank you," Sherlock declaimed, waving him off, fancy Latin term for an overly wide smile from hell sliding off his face in favor of his usual scowl. For all Henry knew, maybe Sherlock had several different types of scowls that looked pretty much the same or only one that he claimed was several different types of scowls. "You greeted me at the door with a gun."

"If I greeted you with a gun," Henry ventured to ask, "Where did I put the gun? What am I doing with the gun?"

Sherlock looked visibly intrigued. "Oh how I love it when the plebeians start to get it. It almost makes me have a tiniest scrap of a mote of what might be the cousin of pride for the unrefined unread unordered union of you."

"I'm glad you think highly of me."

Folding his hands together and resting them under his chin, Sherlock chuckled lowly. "I don't think highly of you or anyone. For me to think highly of you, you would have to ask those questions of yourself. But you expect me to ask them for you."

"I don't get it."

Sherlock sighed quite audibly. "It can't be helped. You did hire me."

He led Henry back to the sofa where just to the right, on the side table lay the gun, gleaming beneath the soft light of the lamps. "You moved it," Henry said.

Sherlock stared at him steadily. "Memory problems are the next symptom," he stated.

Henry stared at him blankly. "Where in God's name are you get this list of symptoms? These are horrible, terrible-"

Sherlock looked at his feet in sheer irritation. "You just used two words that mean the same thing. I'll ignore that for now, because you are more addled witted than usual."

Henry tried to ignore the "than usual bit". "Go on, Mr. Holmes, you were saying."

Pleased as punch that he had given the honor of running his mouth off, Sherlock smirked. "You had a gun in your hands the whole time. Oddly, you didn't seem to be aware of it, so I assumed that the sheer irrational lizard part of your brain had picked it up. When you sat down to comfort me, somehow that same irrational part had the very rational sense to put the gun down."

Taking a few moments to process the words, Henry boggled over them. "And you weren't frightened by a man with a gun? A loaded gun, Mr. Holmes... it was loaded." He paused and picked up the gun with shaking hands before letting it drop and chip the expensive import wood. "I could have blasted your face off the moment your hand hit the glass."

"Wouldn't."

The look on that man's face was cool and arrogant as the profile picture that Dr. Watson had up of him on his blog, even with the silly hat. The face the expression sat on was hardly elegant and had dark shadows under the eyes, snot crusted under both nostrils, curls mashed flat on one side, frizzed badly on the other, and he had a bad case of halitosis now that Henry started to think about it. And there still was that air of fear that had crept on the great detective's face the moment he had seen the hound on Dewer's Hollow. "Why not?"

Sherlock licked badly chapped lips. "For one thing, that is a new gun. I know when a gun has been used. For one thing, it still has stock parts that most users would have exchanged for custom. New guns, stock parts, always throw even the most experienced user off, say if the trigger fit their wrong." He mimed the action and Henry shuddered. "But the most telling thing is, you are not a gun nut. You bought a gun for protection. Under the table of course, because no one in the right mind would give a gun to someone clearly in not in their right mind."

"I'm in my right mind," Henry insisted. "If you were being pursued by something so bad and wicked that you feared for your life... I ask you, Mr. Holmes, wouldn't you give up everything to be proven right?"

For once, Sherlock Holmes was speechless. The master of wit and ire was silent. "Henry... I..." For once, he really was at a loss and was apparently double-checking himself.

"You called me Henry and not Mr. Knight."

"You heard right," Sherlock said and his mouth locked onto Henry in a clumsy definitely a kiss this time.

Henry quickly tilted his head to prevent nose mashing like time. His hands reached up to try to rake themselves through Sherlock's curls, but were quickly smacked down. Clearly he got lucky with the hand on the shoulder move. But then again, Sherlock was rather cat-like and you only pet a cat when it wants you to.

And just like that, it was over. There was no tongue, no eagerly parted lips, and no blush. Sherlock quickly shoved himself backward and went into a litany of mumbling. "Quite out of character... not at all me... feeling I have never felt before... unbecoming... this is the second time you've noticed something about Mr. Knight tastes off." 

Henry discovered later that Sherlock had tasted trace chemicals of the psychoactive drug on his skin which were apparently enough to trigger micro relapses, magnified by Sherlock going completely cold-turkey from nicotine. At the moment, though, Sherlock seemed quite the mad man in a greatcoat and scarf, teeth bared as though he was trying to do his attempt to be a dragon. "Pardon?" Henry asked.

"No, you may not," Sherlock snapped, "It isn't a really good question."

"Is this about the hound?" Henry ventured to ask. It made sense, fear led to passion, which drove people into each other's arms... at least in films and books. He wasn't quite sure how it worked on out in real life. "Mr. Holmes, its all right if it is."

All he got from Sherlock was a quiet eerie little chuckle. "It's never been about the hound, because the hound doesn't exist."

In a matter of seconds, Henry went from feeling confused to downright insulted. "Now wait just a second, Mr. Holmes, you came in, telling me of the hound you had seen." And insulting him in the process now that he thought of it, but in the last half hour he thought they had connected on some level of seeing a hound. "You're just upset."

A snort this time. "I realise that most people like to humanise the inhumane, hence clothes for animals, but believe me when I say that your hound is the wool over your eyes."

"I don't get you." Henry narrowed his eyes. "You're saying I'm seeing things now?"

"Yes and no," Sherlock said. "Do not think too hard. You have been refusing sleep and for that matter sleeping pills." He walked over to the kitchen and extracted the pill Henry had squirreled away in the sugar tin. "John, I presume. I recognise this as the prescription he always prescribes."

"But... I..."

"However, there is something bad out to get you," Sherlock concluded, retying his scarf. "Just not a hound."

"Where are you going?"

"Out to investigate," came the cool answer. Fear was still bright in Sherlock's impossible pale eyes, but there was steely purpose in them now. "I thank you for your help, Henry Knight."

"What help?" Henry asked.

But Sherlock Holmes was already gone.


End file.
